


where space is nothing (yet still something that separates)

by staarked



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Romance, Season 3, a blatant disregard for canon should have been my middle name, can you say angst, no but seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 09:45:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3115493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staarked/pseuds/staarked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is their tragedy, five lifetimes too short of an epilogue. - (Sherlock/Molly. Season 3.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	where space is nothing (yet still something that separates)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm forever bemoaning my life choices. This is basically my attempt at keymashing to convey the overwhelming feels that slapped me like a hurricane after reading ElixirBB and PetraTodd's works which by the way happen to be my personal definition of perfection. God, do I hate out-of-character characters so I do hope this fic doesn't embody just that.
> 
> Also you can find me at staarked on tumblr, we can exchange virtual hugs and cheap beers over the montage of Sherlolly, or Mollock. Whatever it is, you cool kids call it these days

 

_"I'm sorry it's such a lousy story."_

.

.

 

It ends like she’d always expected it to:  with disappointment heavy on her tongue and the slightly maddening feeling of having let something important pass by. Her hand, she feels, is nearly weightless from where it remains suspended mid-air, catching sunlight in a manner that makes the ring shaped tan line on her finger appear less discernible, more stark.

“I’m sorry.” She offers, eyes cast down, because it’s the only thing she has left to, because even with his meat dagger theories Tom deserved better. Everyone deserves better than litanies of insincere explanations and better excuses in face of a broken engagement.

“Yeah,” he clears his throat, fists the ring, smiling a tad, or maybe grimacing, she’s not sure, she never has been despite all her bright and sunny claims of having moved on, “me too, Molls.”

 

 

-

 

 

She could hate him if she tries hard enough, the realization dawns on her about five snippets of a lifetime too late, when she’s cradling her hand in her good one, with pain making inroads through every nerve ending on her body and for a pathologist she’s not really smart. This was nowhere close to a good idea and-

“ _Sorry your engagement's over_ _– though_ _I'm fairly_   _grateful for the lack of a ring_.”

And just like that, he has her clenching her hands into fists even as they ache in protest. The flush crawls up her neck before she can stifle it down, and she should know better by now. He has always had the terrible habit of leaving her raw in shape of collateral damage in his wake.

It’s messy.

It’s stupid.

But mostly it’s the metallic taste of blood filling her mouth and loss weighing her down like an anchor cast out into the sea.

(In retrospect, she should have hit him harder.)

 

 

-

 

 

They don't even bother to tell her he’s been shot until he’s already patched up and numbed down with sedatives.

Not that it makes all that much of a difference. Her response in all essentiality remains the same: she dashes in without giving it a second thought, like a mad, cat lady, kids feel particularly scared to approach on Halloween – _oh,_ _wait_. People turn around to watch her tear through the corridors, almost relentless in her panic until she’s there; crouching next to his bedside, chest heaving with the effort it takes to manage breathing.

“You – _god,_ you-” It comes out so sharp, so accusatory, she nearly winces at the desperation in her voice.

She looks away when she sees him take her in, all dangling shoulders and uninvited devotion, even when he’s lying in a hospital bed, even when she’s down on her knees and it’s her heart strewn across from his feet.  She wonders not for the first time what does he see, what can he possibly deduce _here_ in this moment.

“I’m alive,” his voice is raspy, worn rough with disuse, “Molly.”

“You don't get it, do you?” She feels the anger flare in her chest before she can feel anything else. She likes it better this way, it makes her brave in a way she didn’t think she could ever be. “How many times will you die and make me watch helplessly on the sidelines? Until you can’t?”

His expression oscillates so rapidly between something close to tenderness and the eventual, expectant exasperation that she’s sure she imagined the softness in the first place. “Now you are just being dramatic,” the disuse gives way to something more damning then, “Also incorrect, since the first time I wasn't exactly in mortal peril, given your assistance which did I mention I appr-”

“Shut up.” She cuts him off abruptly, gets up off her knees even as she is weighed down with the odd yet inherent deflation that she has come to associate with being in his vicinity at the wrong time and place. “Just shut up for once, _please_.”

It’s only when he does shut up – which by the way is clearly suggestible of victory, she can deduce a thing here and there too – in favour of looking at her carefully that she realizes she has been crying. “I’m sorry.”

_"So am I.”_

She’ll tell him later, she’ll kiss him first.

 

 

-

 

 

The days blur into nothingness without any word from him and honestly speaking, she’s not surprised, he has better things to do than making social calls and easing out her discomfort. Out of the two of them, there’s only one empath and it’s certainly not Sherlock.

He is better. He is smarter. He fills the space in his head by making world a better place as a hobby, and who knows, he’s probably off somewhere dismantling another terrorist’s network or whatever it is he and John do when they get together. They never really go into the details when discussing their cases in front of her, she has never needed them to.

Life is dull and perfunctory but just the same, it goes on. She takes up more hours at the hospital because she can afford to, now that no one is barging in on her in midst of work and demanding cadavers and body parts.

 _Shame,_ _it doesn't feel like too much like a victory._

She covers up the loss with a scalpel in her hand and corpses on the slab and is about to make an incision one day when she hears it. The voice of a dead man who walks through her dreams at times only to distort them into nightmares. _Did you miss me?_

The clatter of the instrument falling to the floor registers mildly somewhere in the back of her head, it’s not nearly enough to drown out the white noise.

 

 

-

 

 

_Did you miss me?_

 

 

-

 

 

He comes back, pulled apart and fractured, his thoughts slipping out of his grasp from where he sits across from her in a much too old recliner, with Glee playing on the television in the backdrop of her living room making up for the lack of the sound. He doesn't offer her any explanations, that’s her forte. Or apologies, that’s John’s.

“So,” she ventures, not taking her eyes off him, “were you leaving?”

It’s clear from the look he shoots her that he thinks she is a right idiot if she feels the need to ask such a question and it’s funny in a way that is not really funny but now she cannot seem to keep her eyes on him so she looks down at her hands instead. Lets her hand stretch out to trace the fading tan line on her finger.  And sometimes, only sometimes, she misses the ring, it made her feel more grounded and less of a fool. “You weren’t – didn’t,” she corrects herself, aiming and failing to keep her pitch cheerfully careless, “say goodbye.”

He lets out a sigh like he is regrettable of his decision to collapse at her doorstep and she’s sorry, so, _so_ sorry that she has made him want to reach out for a fix of nicotine. She has never wanted to be that person for anyone. Especially not for him. “I’m sorry, I didn't mean to-”

“Yes,” he cuts her off a little sharply than he intends to, she can see the etched apology, even with her head bent low, in the pattern of the nails digging into the armrest, “you did, it’s okay though, Mycroft thought it more savoury to not involve you in this.”

“And you?” She asks because what else has she left to lose.

“I thought it was feasible too,” it cuts even though he had not meant it to, “there was no need for you to strain under the knowledge of yet another murd-”

“You know I am in love with you, right?” She interrupts, looking up, and it is kind of a useless thing on her part to say because he can probably read it in the slight of her hand, the curve of her spine, the incline of her head.

“I have blood on my hands.” And he’s trying to be placatory even as he’s angry. This is clear cut progress in making. “I have killed without remorse, you can’t imagine the extent of...," a hesitant shrug, "I will do it again.”

“I know.” She hates the inflection that seeps into her voice, snapping it into two, making it sound so... _broken_. “I love you – still.” She is sorry but she is also honest.

There is no point in continuing to hold on to her pretences when not saying it out loud will not make it any less true. When staying away from the pull of his gravity, will not make the feelings go away.

For a seconds he looks like he wants to say something, like he’s clutching at words that escape him, like he wants to fix this, whatever it is, between them and put it back in the axis beating on the symmetry. But then, the second passes and whatever resolve his face had conveyed dwindles and die.

“I know.” He shuts his eyes, leans back into the chair.

He never quite looks as sad as he makes her feels.

 

 

-

 

 

Perhaps, this is their tragedy, five lifetimes too short of an epilogue.

 

 

-

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, everything angsty sounds perfectly romantic to me. On second thoughts, I hope this isn't as shitty as I think it is.


End file.
